We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
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“In many parts of the country the graduate earnings premium is negative – these local economies are unable to absorb or properly use higher qualified people because of the structure of the local economy.”
Though I salute Mr Allen’s open-mindedness in linking across the political aisle, I would like to make one observation with which he probably – and his employer the TUC certainly – disagrees: to whit, the fact that there are parts of the country where going to university on average makes a young person poorer is yet another argument against rent control.
Again and again I see the argument that, far from it being a problem that landlords are being driven out of the rental market, it is a fine thing, because landlords selling up will make more homes available. “Home” is a beautiful word, but there are and always will be people who do not want a permanent home. Some of this group are students, obviously, alongside those in temporary jobs, those whose work requires them to move frequently – and those who have a choice between staying at home where their degree is useless or moving to some place where it isn’t. A strong rental market allows rural people to try out life in the city, and vice versa for city people. In a society where landlordism is banished and every house is a home, you had better pray that the waiting list to leave your quaint village is exactly equal in length to the waiting list to join it.
We must be clear about things: A just world required this man to die, and ideally without dignity. I can put it in no blunter terms than that, nor even conceive of them. I am utterly relieved about his death, and more than a bit elated as well — not because I am bloodthirsty, but precisely because I despair over the implacable bloodthirstiness of Hamas, an organization that came to power in the Gaza Strip after it was literally handed to the Palestinians but that, instead of governing for the benefit of its people, harvested its resources and human capital to plot the slaughter, abduction, rape, and eventual genocide of its Jewish neighbors. Sinwar died with a shell through his skull and a roof collapsed upon his bomb-belted body, and I confess my grim satisfaction at the closure of it, if nothing else. He was given the opportunity to be an actual leader, and he invested all of it in hatred and terror. I celebrate, and couldn’t care less if you think differently.
This example of socialist priorities comes from “economic justice campaigner” Richard J Murphy:
Richard Murphy
@RichardJMurphy
Tackling obesity and all its related issues via an injection, instead of dealing with the cause, would be like saying: “Don’t worry about smoking; just take this anti-cancer drug”.
12:47 PM · Oct 15, 2024
“When competence is rewarded, you get more of it. When the ability to play internal politics is what gets you ahead, then you get more of that. SpaceX has clear goals, short deadlines and clear lines of responsibility. Boeing’s culture, once one that revered engineering, has become one that worships byzantine corporate politics — where you’re more likely to get fired over DEI infractions than over job performance. And it’s not just Boeing; in Oregon, a top forestry official was put on leave after a DEI officer complained he was “seeking only the candidates most qualified for the job,” without emphasizing their “gender and identity.” Ditto the federal government, which has created a self-perpetuating culture of incompetence: It’s virtually impossible to get fired, and failures often bring more resources to the agency, not less.”
Just to make the problem clearer. Economies do add up. If this happens here then that over there must also happen. If we don’t see that second then we’re mistaken in our assumption that the first has. If productivity has risen and wages haven’t then the labour share must have fallen. The labour share – up to when PK wrote in 1996 – had not fallen. Therefore that confident blue line from 1970 to 1996 is wrong.
We don’t even have to worry about why it’s wrong. It just is – so bollocks to the rest of it.
Chakrabortty’s getting on a bit to be an enfant terrible of course, his unwillingness to spend time and energy understanding the economics he’s attempting to write about is easier to explain for he’s at The Guardian. In fact, he writes the economic editorials for The Guardian and an actual knowledge of economics in that job – let alone time and effort spent gaining it – would be a positive hindrance.
Twenty years ago it was simple: to any problem, freedom was the answer. But in recent years I have become less sanguine. Some might say I have grown up. Still, I have this uneasy feeling that Western societies are beset with problems and that freedom is not always the answer.
I thought what I would do was to write down the biggest problems facing us here in Britain, write down the libertarian approach and assess in a blog post if it would be successful or not. Well, like many of my big ideas that soon ran into the buffers of indolence. But I did manage to identify what I think are the biggest problems – or crises as I call them – that we face. They are (in approximate order of importance):
1. The Freedom of Speech Crisis. Cancel culture, de-banking, lawfare and actual punishment are being used to prevent people from expressing their opinions. Much of this is being done in the nominally private sector. If this continues the results will be disastrous.
2. The Integration Crisis. Hundreds of thousands of people live in this country and have no affection for its people or its customs and more are coming every day. This is a recipe for an Ulster on the grand scale.
3. The Debt Crisis. Government spending is unsustainable. Mind you, I was thinking that 15 years ago.
4. The Housing Crisis. Young people cannot afford a home where they can bring up children.
5. The Net Zero Crisis. OK, this hasn’t happened yet but when the electricity goes off, modern society will come to a halt.
6. The Ukraine Crisis. Well, you can add in Israel, Taiwan and probably a few other places too. The West is under military attack by people who would like to see it destroyed.
7. The NHS Crisis. Long waits for poor care and indifferent service.
There are a couple that tend to get mentioned regularly that I haven’t included. The Migration Crisis is really part of the Integration Crisis and part of the Housing Crisis. Wokery is part of the Integration Crisis (again) and also part of the Freedom of Speech Crisis.
People occasionally mention the Population Crisis – not enough babies being born. I tend to think this is either not a problem at all (the market will sort it out) or something that is beyond politics.
Is there anything I’ve missed? Do libertarians have the answer?
Well, maybe this is a sign of the times. A Communist dictatorship, which has gone after pesky entrepreneurs such as Jack Ma and many smaller firms, realises that this is bad for business. Who would have imagined that? It is a bit like Lenin realising, in around 1921, that shooting and jailing entrepreneurial people was not smart, so we had the New Economic Policy for a few years until Stalin turned the repression back on to full power.
The question I have, however, is whether this is a temporary change, and bad habits will resume:
China is cracking down on behaviours from law enforcement seen as detrimental to the ordinary function of private businesses, a crucial step in restoring confidence as the country embarks on a whole-of-government effort to ensure a steady, sustainable economic recovery.
Price gouging during disasters is good. It saves lives.
Think of it this way. When the hurricane is on its way do you want people to panic-buy double what they need “just in case”, causing the shops to run out? Why wouldn’t they do that if prices are artificially stopped from rising? Wouldn’t it be better if people limited the amount they bought because “it’s so expensive right now”, leaving more available for others?
When the disaster strikes, would you like businesses and individuals from hundreds of miles away to drop whatever they were doing previously and start transporting emergency supplies into the area affected – and keep doing it until there are no more shortages? Would you like factories hundreds of miles away to shift production to whatever the people in the afflicted area need most? You would? Then let them sell their stuff at a higher price than usual.
Six candidates stood for the leadership: Kemi Badenoch, James Cleverly, Robert Jenrick, Priti Patel, Mel Stride and Tom Tugendhat. They will be eliminated in a series of votes, until two remain to stand in November. On 4 September, Patel was eliminated in the first round of voting, with Jenrick outperforming expectations by coming first. On 10 September, Stride was eliminated in the second round and went on to endorse Cleverly.
Following a strong performance at the Conservative Party Conference, Cleverly emerged as a frontrunner by coming first in the third round of voting, whilst Tugendhat was eliminated.
Despite this, Cleverly was unexpectedly eliminated in a close fourth round of voting when both Badenoch and Jenrick overtook him.
What happened? The Guardian‘s Andrew Sparrow quotes this tweet from Alex Wickham of Bloomberg that might explain it:
Tories saying they think the Cleverly camp lent Jenrick votes to try to keep Badenoch off the ballot but lent too many. Or Cleverly supporters did it off their own backs thinking he was nailed on for the final
One detail that perhaps got lost in the recent UK decision about the Indian Ocean group of islands containing Diego Garcia – taken very fast and over the heads of the Chagos Islands locals (which hardly fits with ideas about decolonisation) – was that President Biden applauded the move. In way this isn’t surprising. Pr. Biden doesn’t particularly like the UK, and like a certain kind of American politician, has a grudge about the old, post-imperial network of relationships and territories that the UK has, or had, around the world. More fool him.
In this transfer and lease deal (which is not, as far as I know, formally signed and there has been no formal debate or legislation about this in Parliament) the UK is transferring taxpayers money in a payment programme to a tax haven (Mauritius). If the Tories had done this, the tax haven angle would have been constantly mentioned.
It seems ironic that Labour, a party not exactly known for its love of tax havens (unless Tony Blair uses one) or such international conduits, feels it is okay to deal with Mauritius financially in this way. Don’t get me wrong, I am for tax havens, and the more of them the better, because they deter otherwise high-tax governments from going crazy when capital is mobile, although as UK finance minister Rachel Reeves is proving, that’s not a solid protection. Tax hikes are likely in the 30 October UK budget. People are leaving.
Biden’s support for what’s happened should give pause, given what a poor President he is on foreign affairs, in my view. Also, he hasn’t made much disguise of his distaste for Brexit and the UK’s independence out of the bloc, and neither did Barack Obama. There’s no enthusiasm from that quarter for the UK to engage in new trade and other deals with countries outside the EU. And Biden’s own recent judgement about foreign affairs is spotty at best: half-decent on Israel and Ukraine, and shockingly inept over Afghanistan, with the rushed departure and loss of billions of dollars of equipment.
Those on the Republican side are, apparently, far less happy about the Chagos islands deal, and the potential risk to security of the Diego Garcia airbase jointly used by the UK and US. They know how porous leasehold deals can be, and have seen that Mauritius has used all legal pressure to change the terms of its independence settlement with the UK of 1968. The US Air Force has used the base in recent conflicts; if it wanted to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities, for example, and do so via Diego Garcia, the situation becomes dicier than it might have been. One has to wonder about the role of China in all this (Chinese money flows through Mauritius.)
This whole saga also shows that if the UK is to pursue a more “blue water” foreign policy in future as it expands trade links with countries outside Europe, particular in Asia, that getting its defence arrangements locked down is essential. And we need to lose our illusions about how special our relationship with the US really is at times.
Daniel Hannan has this excellent overview of just what a shockingly poor transaction the UK has made with Mauritius. Hannan argues that Mauritius has never exercised sovereignty over the islands, a fact that is so shocking it is hard to argue how on earth we reached this point and how the Mauritius government thought it could bully its way ahead on this. However, a future, different UK government should certainly revisit the terms of this deal, and press hard on Mauritius if, for example, that country’s anti-money laundering standards are questioned in future. Time for a bit of nastiness behind the smiles.
It may be too late now to change course on this specific, shabby deal, at least under the current Starmer government. I fear it is. And now there’s speculation about what happens to the Falkland Islands and Gibraltar. The UK has shown itself to be weak. People tend to notice.
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We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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